Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Limited Army, Limited War

The Syrian army is deteriorating without the massive support of the former Soviet Union. So the Syrians are discounting their army and looking to the Hizbollah War of last summer as an example of how to fight Israel:


What Syria has invested in, is Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. That, and more training for its rocket troops, and its commandos. Thus it appears that Syria is preparing to fight like Hizbollah, in the event of another war with Israel. Fire lots of SCUDs and smaller rockets, use good infantry to fight in border villages, and shoot down Israeli aircraft with modern missile systems. Yeah, that might work.


This assumes Israel learned nothing from last year's war and would fight Syria on a static and shallow front with frontal assaults to take meaningless villages and hunt rocket launchers from the air.

The "yeah, that mighy work" comment is sarcasm, I assume. The Syrian military is trying to make a virtue of necessity. Their army can't stop the Israelis so the Syrians hope the Israelis won't need to be stopped. If the Israelis stop themselves, a small force of semi-irregulars can inflict casualties and buy time for the international community to rescue Syria.

But if it comes to war with Syria, Israel will take out Syria's air defenses in short order and mount a mechanized drive that rolls up to Damascus and puts the capital in artillery range. Any Syrian conventional units that try to stop them will be destroyed.

The Israelis will not again play the foolish game they played in Lebanon of fighting on their enemy's terms.